Marrying Harriet (11 page)

‘Well . . .’ Amy bit her nails. ‘What if he genuinely liked her? I mean, what if there is a splendid match under our noses and we are about to spoil it by being over-zealous on Harriet’s behalf? Now, he is a jaded man of the world, and what is the most interesting thing to a jaded man?’

‘Nothing.’

‘There is something . . . forbidden fruit. We tell him when he calls that we do not approve of him and that Harriet is too good for him and he must never see her again.’

‘And what if he obeys us?’

‘Then Harriet will be free from his company and if he persists in seeing her, then we will know he is genuinely interested in her.’

There came a scratching at the door and a footman entered, holding a letter. ‘This came by hand, ma’am,’ he said, handing it to Amy.

‘So, as I was saying,’ went on Amy, crackling open the letter and glancing idly down at its contents. Then she went very still and the hand holding the letter began to tremble.

‘What is it?’ cried Effy in alarm.

Amy threw down the letter, ran from the room to Harriet’s bedchamber and flung open the door. No one. She called for the servants and asked them to search the house from top to bottom.

When she returned to Effy, her sister had read the letter and was now lying back against her pillows with Baxter, the lady’s maid, holding burnt feathers under her nose. Amy picked it up and read it again. ‘We have Miss Brown,’ she read. ‘It will cost Five Thousand Pounds to have her returned to you, Unharmed. Do not contact the Authorities or we will kill her bit by bit. You Are Being Watched. You will hear from Us again Tomorrow. The Common Man’s Avenger.’

‘Mr Haddon,’ said Amy. ‘Fetch Mr Haddon.’

But the footman who conveyed the message by word of mouth merely said that Miss Amy wanted to see him immediately, and Mr Haddon, who was in a sulk because of the encouraged attentions of Mr Lawrence, sent back a message that he was too busy.

Now Amy did feel helpless. She wrote a note, telling him what had happened and begging for his support, and sent it back; but by this time Mr Haddon had gone out for a walk and was not to be found. Mr Randolph could not be found either. In despair, Amy sent a letter to Mr Lawrence, who was taking tea with his nephew, Lord Charles, when the letter arrived.

‘Dear me,’ said Mr Lawrence, startled out of his usual calm. ‘Your ladies, the Tribbles, my boy, say here that Miss Brown has been taken by force and her abductors are holding her to ransom.’

Lord Charles felt exactly as if someone had just kicked him in the stomach.

He seized the letter, scanned its contents and then jerked his uncle forcibly to his feet. ‘Come along,’ he said.

‘But I have not had my breakfast,’ wailed Mr Lawrence as he was propelled down his staircase. ‘And it is only two in the afternoon, bedemned.’

They found a sad scene in the Tribbles’ drawing room. Amy was sitting by the fire, tears cascading down her face, and on her lap lay a long tress of midnight-black hair.

‘They sent this, the murderers,’ whispered Amy brokenly. ‘It arrived a few moments ago. What are we to do?’

‘How much do they want?’ asked Mr Lawrence, sitting down beside her on the sofa and putting an arm around her shoulders.

‘Five thousand pounds,’ said Effy. ‘Where are we going to get five thousand pounds?’

‘As to that, I will give you the money,’ said Mr Lawrence grandly.

Effy threw herself into his arms, nearly sending him flying backwards over the sofa and babbling that he was a hero, a knight in shining armour.

‘I do have the money, do I not, nephew?’ Mr Lawrence asked Lord Charles.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Lord Charles, correctly understanding that it was he who was meant to pay the ransom.

‘But why should we give in?’ demanded Mr Lawrence. ‘Call out the constables. Call out the militia!’

Amy stroked the hair on her lap and miserably shook her head.

‘Mr Feathers,’ announced Harris.

Mr Feathers had called earlier than he had intended. He blinked at the distraught faces that met his inquiring gaze and asked timidly, ‘Is Miss Brown at home?’

‘No, she is not,’ said Mr Lawrence. ‘She has been abducted and held to ransom.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr Feathers weakly, ‘I see I am called at an unfortunate time. When she returns, present my compliments to Miss Brown and—’

‘You feeble-minded whoreson. You pig’s arse in a dog collar,’ roared Amy. She held up the hank of hair. ‘She is being returned to us in
pieces
!’

Mr Lawrence let out a nervous giggle and then clapped his hand over his mouth in embarrassment.

‘As I said,’ bleated Mr Feathers, ‘I must go. You . . . you will probably find it was all a joke and she has simply gone for a drive in a hack with those friends of hers and—’

Lord Charles strode across the room and seized the unfortunate vicar by the lapels of his coat. ‘You saw her! When did you see her?’

‘Unhand me, sir,’ cried Mr Feathers, striving for dignity, ‘and I will tell you.’

Lord Charles released him. Mr Feathers huffily brushed down his coat and said in his finicky voice, ‘I was taking the air this morning and I saw Miss Brown entering a hack with a woman on one side of her and a man on the other.’

‘What did they look like?’ demanded Lord Charles.

‘The woman was shabby-genteel, like a governess or companion. The man was showily and cheaply dressed.’

‘Height, demme, and colour of hair?’ asked Lord Charles, fighting down a longing to shake the information out of the vicar.

‘The man was quite tall, with a rabbity sort of mouth and ginger hair.’

‘Frank the footman,’ said Amy bitterly. ‘I’ll kill him.’

‘Who is this footman?’ Lord Charles swung round to face Amy.

‘He was once in our employ,’ said Amy. ‘He left after trying to stop the staff working by filling their heads with a lot of radical nonsense. I saw him earlier this year down in a street near the City. He had been inciting the crowd by preaching the rights of man. He calls himself Dr Frank now.’

‘The hack,’ cried Lord Charles. ‘Is there any hope you saw the number, Mr Feathers?’

Mr Feathers smiled complacently. ‘I always notice numbers and things like that. I am very observant.’

‘Well, stop standing there grinning and come out with it,’ snarled Lord Charles.

Mr Feathers backed away a step. ‘It was three-five-three, as I recall,’ he said.

‘I am going in search of that hack,’ said Lord Charles. ‘Do not do anything until I return.’

‘Please be careful,’ begged Amy. ‘That Frank is a monster!’

Harriet sat on a hard chair in a bleak room in Bloomsbury and surveyed Miss Spiggs with disfavour. Harriet’s hair, minus that one tress, fell about her shoulders. Miss Spiggs was gingerly holding the pistol Frank had left with her.

‘Are you man and wife – you and that popinjay?’ asked Harriet contemptuously.

‘Dr Frank and I have an understanding,’ said Miss Spiggs proudly.

‘Then you should not be living with him under the same roof, let alone being engaged in criminal activities. What do you plan to do with the money for my ransom, should you ever get it?’

‘We shall give it to our fellow sufferers.’

‘You mean other criminals?’

‘No, we are trying to redress the unequal balance among the classes, just like they did in France. Ah, those brave people storming the Bastille and throwing open the prison doors to let their suffering comrades go free. I would love to have been there!’

‘You are old enough to have done so,’ said Harriet with a rare flash of feminine malice. ‘But what fustian you do talk! They attacked the Bastille, not for the purpose of freeing a handful of aristocrats and madmen, but to get at the arsenal that was housed there.’

‘That is not true!’

‘And if you are so concerned with the unequal balance of things, may I suggest you sell that fine diamond pin you are wearing and give some money to the poor?’

Miss Spiggs put one hand protectively up to cover the diamond pin, her prized possession that had been given to her by the Tribbles’ last charge, Miss Maria Kendall. Did she somehow guess that her pin was her attraction for Dr Frank? She did not know Frank was married to the Tribbles’ former maid Bertha, and that Bertha had allowed Frank to go off with Miss Spiggs only because Frank had promised to get that pin; but somewhere deep inside she did not trust Frank, although at that moment she would not have admitted such a dreadful thought to herself.

‘Do you know how to use that?’ asked Harriet, pointing to the gun.

Miss Spiggs’s eyes flashed. She saw herself on the barricades, leading the revolution. ‘Of course.’

‘How did you know of the Misses Tribble?’

Miss Spiggs frowned. She was a plump little woman whose mouth was perpetually curved in a humourless smile.

‘I was companion to the last young lady they had in their charge, and it was I who was instrumental in getting the Duke of Berham to marry my lady, Miss Kendall. Both those Tribbles put it about that I had lied and interfered. Mr and Mrs Kendall subsequently employed me, but again the Tribbles had me turned off.’

‘So you do not believe any of that fustian you were talking,’ said Harriet contemptuously. ‘You are party to the abduction of me out of no higher motive than plain spite and greed.’

Miss Spiggs sniffed haughtily. ‘It is no use in trying to talk to such a closed mind as yours.’

‘What are you really going to do with the ransom money?’

Miss Spiggs’s pale eyes grew dreamy. ‘The money will go to the cause, but we shall keep a little for ourselves and buy a cottage in the country and perhaps keep a few pigs and geese.’

‘So,’ said Harriet coldly, ‘you plan to murder me as soon as you have the money.’

Miss Spiggs’s eyes flashed. ‘Dr Frank said he would release you as soon as the ransom is paid, and he is a gentleman.’

‘Well, you poor fool, and how did you imagine you would be left in peace to enjoy this cottage? All the constables and militia of England will be looking for you.’

There was a long silence while the import of what Harriet had just said sank into Miss Spiggs’s silly, besotted brain.

‘Then you must promise not to talk,’ she said weakly.

‘Idiot,’ rejoined Harriet. ‘Come shoot me now, for I would rather be killed by you than cut into pieces by that red-haired pig.’

‘Stay where you are!’ cried Miss Spiggs as Harriet rose stiffly to her feet, stiff for she felt she had been sitting in that chair for a lifetime. The very act of moving gave her courage. Miss Spiggs leaped to her feet and darted behind her own chair. ‘Stand back,’ she shouted.

‘If God wishes me to die,’ said Harriet half to herself, ‘then I shall die.’ She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them again they were like blue steel.

After what seemed ages, Lord Charles tracked down the driver of the hack, who turned out to be very old and very deaf but whose hearing improved amazingly at the sight of a gold guinea.

‘Havers Street,’ he said. ‘Don’t ’zactly recall the number, but it’s slap-bang next to the Gold Lion.’

Lord Charles drove off, refusing to think of the peril Harriet was in, determined only to reach Havers Street as quickly as possible.

He reached the Gold Lion pub and tied his horses’ reins to a post and went into the pub. The landlord was behind the small cubby-hole of a bar. ‘Five guineas for you, landlord,’ said Lord Charles, ‘if you can tell me the whereabouts of a tall man, foppishly dressed, with ginger hair, who lives hard by.’

‘Give me the money,’ said the landlord with a grin, ‘and I’ll tell you.’

Lord Charles handed over the money, saying in his pleasant voice, ‘If you are lying to me, my good man, I will break your head.’

‘Not I, guv. The man you want is over there, in the corner.’

Lord Charles swung round. Frank was indeed there, his eyes unfocused with all he had drunk. He had been drinking and dreaming of how he would take Bertha to France as soon as he got the money. He would kill Harriet, take Miss Spiggs’s pin from her, lock her up and leave her to the tender mercies of the magistrates, should they ever find her. He had never killed anyone before, but the drink he had consumed had persuaded him he would be able to do it.

The next thing he knew, he was jerked up to his feet and a pair of blazing green eyes bored into his own.

‘Where is Harriet Brown?’ said Lord Charles.

Sobered and desperate with fear, Frank tore himself free. He knocked over the table and tried to head for the door. Lord Charles seized him by the coat, swung him around and punched him hard, full on the jaw. Frank staggered and reeled, blood from a cut made by Lord Charles’s ring pouring from the side of his mouth. ‘I’ll never tell you,’ he said. ‘Come, boys,’ he yelled to the taproom, ‘here’s some fine lord attacking a decent common man!’

He blinked and shook his head like a baffled bull, for the taproom had emptied and the landlord was crouched down behind the safety of the bar.

Lord Charles swung his fist and punched Frank hard again.

Frank clutched his chest. ‘Don’t,’ he whined. ‘My heart. Don’t.’

Lord Charles got him by the throat and began to shake him. ‘Where is she?’ he shouted. ‘Tell me or I will kill you.

Frank gave a strange rattling sound and went limp. Lord Charles let him slide to the floor and strode up to where the landlord was hiding. ‘Give me a pitcher of water, damn you, till I revive this cur.’

The landlord scrambled to his feet, handed over a jug of water, timidly crept out of his cubicle and from behind the tiny bar, and followed Lord Charles across the taproom. Lord Charles dashed the pitcher of water full in Frank’s face, but the ex-footman did not move.

‘Begging your parding, my lord,’ said the landlord with an apologetic cough. ‘But it’s my belief you killed ’im.’

‘Nonsense.’ Lord Charles knelt on the floor and loosened Frank’s collar. He unbuttoned one of Frank’s two flowered waistcoats and felt for his heart. Then he slowly rose to his feet. ‘Pity,’ said Lord Charles. ‘It seems you have the right of it. Where did this creature live?’

‘Next door,’ said the landlord, backing away. ‘Forty-two. Second floor.’

‘Get away from me,’ Miss Spiggs was screaming as Harriet advanced menacingly on her. Harriet leaped forward and seized the hand that held the gun. Miss Spiggs, thinking wildly of how angry Frank would be, fought like a tiger, but she was no match for Harriet, who was fighting for her life.